New UV Inks Run At Twice Speed Of Conventional UV

Claimed to print at more than twice the web speed of conventional ultra violet (UV) inks on newspaper presses, Sun Chemical will show its new Uniweb Sunray inks to a during Ifra in Vienna (Austria).

Visitors to Ifra, which will run from October 8 - 11, will be taken to a demonstration of the Uniweb Sunray inks at the Herold Druck newspaper plant in the city.

Sun said that the visitors will see newspapers and magazines printed at 11 metres per second on a MAN Roland Colorman press.

Previously, the normal speed for UV newspaper printing has been four to five metres per second.

Sun Chemical will be hosting VIP visits to the newspaper production at Herold Druck, which is said to be the only newspaper in the world that is running the high-speed inks.

By comparison, all other sites are operating at slow speeds on retrofitted presses.

According to Sun, The Herold needed to internalise its owner and brand magazine and, due to a shortage of space, needed to install heatset-type driers, creating the need for UV.

The Herold Druck uses UV and conventional inks on the same printing tower, enabling it to have versatility for production demands.

The use of UV enables a newspaper printer to streamline its operation by using a single press for traditional newspaper products and other commercial work, such as inserts and magazines that were previously outsourced.

That enables printers to produce higher value products, help publishers protect advertising revenues and offer something different to their competitors, added Sun.

It is also claimed that there are also environmental benefits that can be achieved through the use of Uniweb Sunray, including none of the gas usage or carbon emissions associated with traditional drying methods.

In addition, the UV option offers greater cost-efficiency.

Thomas Unterberger, chief technical officer for Herold Druck, said: "The most important opinions are those of our customers and they are delighted with the results of printing at very high speeds, producing high quality newspapers and magazines.

The inks are critical to this success and we are extremely pleased with the results." Charles Murray, Sun Chemical's corporate vice-president, commented: "As the pioneer of UV ink in the 1960s, we naturally had the heritage and the competence to design these products that are specifically for newspaper applications and have the consistency and speed that the newspaper printer demands.

We are delighted to be working with our partners in such a project that has the first successful and commercially available high speed UV newspaper inks at its heart.

The UV centre of excellence for all our products, including the newspaper offering, is here in the UK." Herold Druck was founded in 1893 and publishes Die Presse, Wiener Zeitung, said to be the world's oldest daily newspaper and also Heute, Austria's most successful free daily newspaper, together printing 500,000 copies per day.

It is the first publisher in the country to use UV inks in four-colour newspaper and magazine printing, added Sun.

Herold Druck's total weekly print runs totals almost four million copies, which also includes various commercial products, weekly publications and catalogues.

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